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Top rated MERLOT materialsCopyright (C) 2018 MERLOT Some Rights ReservedSun, 24 Jul 2016 05:57:04 GMTMERLOThttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/images/merlot_column.pnghttps://www.merlot.org/
-1-1After Slavery Websitehttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=544291
<p><strong>After Slavery: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post-Emancipation Carolinas</strong></p><p>After Slavery is a transatlantic research collaboration between historians based in the US, Ireland and the UK. Directed from Queen's University Belfast and funded by the (UK) Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project's website offers a large collection of images and transcribed primary documents from dozens of archives across the US. Its 'Online Classroom' includes ten units on the aftermath of slave emancipation in the Carolinas:</p><p><strong>1. Emancipation: Giving Meaning to Freedom</strong></p><p><strong>2. Freed Slaves Mobilize</strong></p><p><strong>3. Land and Labor</strong></p><p><strong>4. Freedom, Black Soldiers &amp; the Union Military</strong></p><p><strong>5. Conservatives Respond to Emancipation</strong></p><p><strong>6. Pursuing Citizenship: Justice and Equality</strong></p><p><strong>7. Gender and the Politics of Freedom</strong></p><p><strong>8. Planters, Poor Whites and White Supremacy</strong></p><p><strong>9. Coercion, Paramilitary Terror &amp; Freedpeople's Resistance</strong></p><p><strong>10. Freedpeople and the Republican Party</strong></p><p>Each unit is made up of a collection of primary sources, annotated and supplemented by a select bibliography and a series of "Questions to Consider'. Most include illustrations from contemporary sources, and plans are in place for inclusion of a series of interactive maps and link to large collection of digital images of related documents now part of the <em>Lowcountry Digital Library</em>.</p><p> </p><p><strong>What Scholars Are Saying about the After Slavery Website: </strong></p><p>“This engaging website combines the most up-to-date scholarship on the aftermath of slavery with a set of provocative and fascinating documents and other materials ideal for classroom use. It will allow a broad online readership to understand where our thinking now stands on this pivotal moment in American history.”</p><p><strong>Eric Foner Dewitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University Author of <em>Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 </em></strong></p><p>“This turning point in our history, explored in such detail at afterslavery.com is, sadly, mostly absent from the high school classroom. The stories of transformation and the long and arduous struggle for equality of 4 million former slaves–their struggle for recognition, freedom, and basic human rights–is rarely even touched on. After Slavery helps to fill this void in the American history curriculum by introducing cutting edge scholarship and well-chosen primary sources to bring voice to this untold story.”</p><p><strong>Ann Claunch Director of Curriculum, <em>U. S. National History Day;</em> Professor Emeritus in the History of Education, University of New Mexico</strong></p><p>“The After Slavery website explores the multiple meanings of the era of emancipation and conveys the very essence of the often tenuous struggle for freedom in starkly human terms.”</p><p><strong>Bernard E. Powers, Jr. Director of African American Studies, College of Charleston; author of <em>Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885</em></strong></p><p>“This is an exciting, well-conceived, and very valuable project. It promises to be a great resource for scholars, teachers, and students. The history of the Carolinas can capture the variety of experiences in the period after slavery and also reveal the depth of the challenges faced as African Americans sought to realize the promise of freedom.”</p><p><strong>Paul D. Escott Reynolds Professor of History, Wake Forest University; author of <em>North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction</em></strong></p>Mon, 02 May 2011 22:57:00 GMTBruce Baker; Brian Kelly; Susan O'Donovan University of Londoin-Royal Holloway; After Slavery Project, Queen's University Belfast; University of MemphisAmerica's Historic Lakeshttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=708864
<p>The fascinating history of the Lake Champlain, Lake George and Richelieu River regions of Vermont, New York, and Quebec as told by local historian and author James P. Millard and Guest Contributors. This 'coffee table book' on the web explores through dramatic photos and text the story of this vital transportation corridor through the wilderness. Covers the period from discovery of the lakes, through the French and Indian War, American Revolution, War of 1812, canal barge, steamship era and beyond.</p>Sat, 10 Nov 2012 16:20:24 GMTJim Millard Saint Michael's CollegeAmerican Government: OpenStax [College]https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1199986
<p>American Government is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester American Government course. The title includes innovative features to enhance student learning, including Insider Perspective features and a Get Connected module that shows students how they can get engaged in the political process. The book provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of American Government and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them. American Government is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 International license.</p>
<p> </p>Sun, 24 Jul 2016 05:57:04 GMTGlen Krantz; Sylvie Waskiewicz OpenStax; OpenStaxCalisphere: A World of Primary Sources and Morehttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=568631
<p>This site allows the public to access over 150,000 primary sources that were previously dispersed in separate archives in California. There are themed collections divided by time period. One may also browse the site by a selected list of topics. It also has a segment especially for teachers.</p>Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:24:19 GMTCalifornia Digital Library, University of CaliforniaDigital American Literature Anthologyhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=779708
<p>The Digital American Literature Anthology is a free, online textbook that surveys American literature from its beginnings to the early twentieth century. It is available in multiple digital formats, though specifically designed for tablets, laptops, and e-readers. The textbook has links to unit introductions, and multiple supplemental online resources. </p>Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:45:24 GMTMichael O'Conner Millikin UniversityThe Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Recordhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=877812
<p>The 1,280 images in this collection have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery. This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and the general public - in brief, anyone interested in the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World.</p>
<p>Little effort is made to interpret the images and establish the historical authenticity or accuracy of what they display. However, we have made every effort to ensure bibliographic accuracy and the correct identification of both primary and secondary sources from which the images have been obtained, as well as correct identification of the area, country, or region to which the image refers. The dates we assign may refer to the date an image was published, at other times to when an author visited an area; in other cases, we could only assign a general time period.</p>Mon, 14 Jul 2014 21:38:13 GMTJerome S. Handler; Michael L. Tuite, Jr.The Valcour Bay Research Project on the Webhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=78165
<p>An actual underwater archeological survey in Lake Champlain's Valcour Bay, scene of a pivotal naval battle during the American Revolution.</p>Tue, 19 Nov 2002 08:00:00 GMTEdwin Scollon, James P. Millard America's Historic LakesWithout Sanctuaryhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=547450
<p>This lesson has students analyzing lynching postcards from the site withoutsanctuary.org. A simple writing prompt will allow students to share their thoughts, in the form of a letter, on these powerful and sometimes graphic images from Jim Crow.</p>Thu, 12 May 2011 21:27:22 GMTKevin KarkkainenLesson Plan on Culture and Globalizationhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=84645
This lesson plan contains numerous activities for students to explore the spread of American culture throughout the world, including a role-playing exercise on a major U.S.-Canada trade dispute.Fri, 02 Sep 2005 07:00:00 GMTCenter for Strategic and International StudiesAnnenberg Classroom: Resources for Excellent Civics Educationhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=880600
<p>The Annenberg Classroom is an innovative website for high school teachers teaching U.S. Civics Education. Here you will find excellent educational content about the United States Constitution, Courts, Presidency, Congress, and more.</p>Thu, 24 Jul 2014 03:40:00 GMTAnnenberg Classroom Staff The Leonore Annenberg Institute for CivicsFutureStateshttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=646669
<p>Collection of 20 to 30 minute dramatizations that project possible futures for the U.S. and American society. Very thought provoking and will generate significant class discussion. Third season now available.</p>Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:02:25 GMTWISC-Online: Religionhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=748697
<p>A collection of interactive learning objects. This link is their collection of lessons related to religion - mostly brief overview of the world's religions and first amendment religious liberty issues (including some specific case studies based on real course cases). "The digital library of objects has been developed primarily by faculty from the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS)"</p>Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:17:17 GMTTherese Nemec Wisconsin Technical College SystemAmerican Government: Your Voice, Your Futurehttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1130568
<p>Published in February of 2011, the 4th edition fully incorporates 2010 election coverage while providing students with a comparative perspective on American government. Kerbel speaks to and with students about the citizenship choices available to them while presenting American government in terms they can relate to and appreciate. A natural, relaxed writing style promotes a sense of a conversation between author and reader. Students are invited to explore how theory is connected to practice, whether their ideas about government are rooted in opinion or fact, and why political actors act the way they do.</p>Thu, 25 Feb 2016 16:55:21 GMTMatthew KerbelAmerican Romanticism Onlinehttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=773355
<p>American Romanticism Online provides teachers and students access to a variety of free resources for the American Romantic period (1830-1890). The site includes annotated primary texts, summaries, interactive lessons and quizzes, and period images. </p>Fri, 05 Jul 2013 19:13:27 GMTJeffrey Everhart Longwood UniversityAP Archive - You Tubehttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1053617
<p>AP Archive is the film and video archive of The Associated Press, one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering. You can view AP Archive’s videos via this You Tube channel. The collection offers 1.7 million global news and entertainment video stories, which date back to 1895, and also include those of its partner newsreel archive British Movietone. </p>
<p>Among some of the incidents that have film footage are the 1929 stock market crash, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Victory in Europe Day from London in 1945, coverage of the Vietnam War, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990, and amateur video of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. AP Archive also offers curated playlists, promotes cherry-picked content and features a daily &#39;Editor’s Pick&#39;, which highlights the most important stories of the day.</p>Wed, 05 Aug 2015 22:35:22 GMTAssociated PressCivil War Washingtonhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1045654
<p><em>Civil War Washington</em> examines the U.S. national capital from multiple perspectives as a case study of social, political, cultural, and medical/scientific transitions provoked or accelerated by the Civil War. The project draws on the methods of many fields—literary studies, history, geography, computer-aided mapping—to create a digital resource that chronicles the war&#39;s impact on the city. Troops, fugitive slaves, bureaucrats, prostitutes, actors, authors, doctors, and laborers were among those drawn to the capital by a sense of duty, desperation, or adventure. Drawing on material ranging from census records to literary texts and from forgotten individuals to the famous (such as Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman) the site examines how Washington changed from a sleepy southern town to the symbolic center of the Union and nation. In other words, it would help teachers introduce students to the concept of change over time as well as providing specific information about one city between 1860 and 1865.</p>Thu, 09 Jul 2015 13:29:58 GMTSusan C. Lawrence; Elizabeth Lorang; Kenneth M. Price; Kenneth J. WinkleGilded Age Plains City: The Great Sheedy Murder Trial and the Booster Ethos of Lincoln, Nebraskahttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1046061
<p><em>Gilded Age Plains City: The Great Sheedy Murder Trial and the Booster Ethos of Lincoln, Nebraska</em> explores the development of towns and cities on the Great Plains through the lens of a murder case in the 1890s that evolved into a fascinating story.</p>
<p>The designers have three goals. Tell a good story about a fascinating episode in Great Plains urban history in a new way. Explore the various factors and developments that explain why the story became a <em>cause celebre</em> and thus make the story a window into a past society and culture. And, finally, explore through digital presentation new and innovative ways to do local and regional history and explain historical events. In the course of the following story, designers hope a reader will come away with a better understanding about life in a small city of the eastern plains — Lincoln, Nebraska — in the late nineteenth century. More deeply interested history fans and scholars will find a rich and deeply documented research base that explores the story at nearly the microhistorical level of lived experience in a specific time and place. Interlinking text with images, photographs, maps, and documents, the site presents the spatial and material world that reflected the economy, society, politics, and culture in which all the key actors and players in this drama lived and worked. At a deeper level, this site also seeks to explore the theoretical nature of historical explanation. Though most historical narratives rely on a linear understanding of cause and effect that runs through them, historians are certainly aware that any series of related events on one level of reality is affected by a range of other developments in other areas of activity. The connections made possible by non-linear presentation facilitate this kind of &#34;structural&#34; or &#34;non-linear&#34; thinking.</p>Fri, 10 Jul 2015 17:33:24 GMTTimothy R. Mahoney Plains Humanities AllianceJURN: Open Access Search Engine and eJournal Directory for Arts and Humanitieshttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1139438
<p>JURN is a search engine tool for finding and reading open access scholarly articles, chapters, theses in the Arts and Humanities, as well as, a comprehensive Open Access Directory of over 3000 selected Open Access eJournals in the Arts and Humanities. In addition, over 600 eco/nature titles of eJournals are A-Z indexed and searchable in JURN.</p>Fri, 18 Mar 2016 18:28:08 GMTJURNLucknow American Studies Professional Developmenthttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=644419
<p>This website was developed as part of a CSULB-Lucknow University collaboration about the teaching of American Studies.</p>Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:39:20 GMTTim Keirn; Eileen LuhrOrigins of American Animation, 1900-1921https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=813457
<p>According to the website, "The development of early American animation is represented by this collection of 21 animated films and 2 fragments, which spans the years 1900 to 1921. The films include clay, puppet, and cut-out animation, as well as pen drawings. They point to a connection between newspaper comic strips and early animated films, as represented by <em>Keeping Up With the Joneses</em>, <em>Krazy Kat</em>, and <em>The Katzenjammer Kids</em>. As well as showing the development of animation, these films also reveal the social attitudes of early twentieth-century America." Among the many subjects listed in its index are automobiles, circuses, magic, husbands/wives, as well as topics related to World War I such as Emperor William II and propaganda. The animations can also be accessed through an alphabetical title list, a chronological title list, and search by keyword. There is also a link to "Notes on the Origins of American Animation, 1900-1921" by Scott Simmon that provides brief introductions to particular works. The films were taken from different collections within the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress. The site also provides some suggestions for teachers, aimed primarily at K-12 instructors, that is divided into the categories of History, Critical Thinking, and Arts &amp; Humanities.</p>Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:13:40 GMTRichmond Daily Dispatch, 1860-1865https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=811662
<p>As of 2005, there are 1384 issues of the <em>Richmond Daily Dispatch</em> available dated between November 1860 and December 1865. The newspaper was nonpartisan, meaning that much of its revenue came from advertising. Although all the articles have been digitized, the project directors decided to save money by having only one day of advertisements every two weeks digitized. Since most ads ran for many days or weeks, this is a substantial sampling of the ads without much loss of fidelity to the original paper. The collection can be searched or browsed. </p><p>In addition the site contains some other materials. There is an introduction to the city of Richmond and the newspaper itself during the Civil War era, a chronology of the war, information about the project in general, and technical information about what was required to complete the project from its beginning as a ProQuest microfilm edition of the paper. Added after 2005 is additional contemporary printed materials, such as the Richmond City Council Minutes, the Hollywood Memorial Association Register of Confederate Dead, the Virginia Convention Proceedings, and various printed diaries and letters. Most of this material is accessed through the "Books on Civil War Richmond" section of the site. There is also a Help Guide that assists with searching approaches, how to interpret search results, and how geneaologists might best approach the site.</p>Tue, 12 Nov 2013 16:29:42 GMTSecond Great Awakening Presentationhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=606232
<p>This presentation is a StAIR (Stand Alone Instructional Resource). It is designed to be viewed by students independently in PowerPoint show mode. Students hit the "next" button to move through the show as they learn. The presentation summarizes the key aspects of the Second Great Awakening as a precursor to the reform movements in antebellum America.</p>Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:45:04 GMTLaura LaFrenierThe Civil War, National Park Servicehttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1078426
<p>In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the National Parks Service developed a website that offers access to some of the lesser known aspects of the war. The site can be explored via &#34;Stories,&#34; a topical approach; &#34;People,&#34; divided into categories such as politicians or soldiers; &#34;Places,&#34; sites related to the war held within the NPS; and &#34;Collections,&#34; which is related to objects held by the NPS.</p>Wed, 11 Nov 2015 19:09:11 GMTNational Park ServiceThe Coming of the American Revolution, 1764-1776https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=882395
<p>By investigating the lives and events recorded in newspapers, official documents and personal correspondence from&nbsp;the collection of the Massachusetts History Society, you will immerse yourself in the past and discover the fears, friction and turmoil that shaped the tumultuous times from 1774 through 1776.&nbsp; Specifically,&nbsp;the website will 1) provide an easily understood chronology of key events leading up to the war; 2) present crucial documents relating to those events; 3) offer contextual materials that comprise a cumulative narrative of the period; 4) include suggestions on how teachers can use the documents to convey the immediacy and contingency of historical events; and 5) reveal that the practice of history is a series of approximations, as students compare and contrast differing documentary accounts to arrive at the most accurate view of an incident.&nbsp;</p>Fri, 01 Aug 2014 16:01:40 GMTMassachusetts Historical Society